House of Fraser and Selfridges see biggest footfall rise on Black Friday weekend

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Dec 5, 2016

UK high streets and department stores benefitted from a week-on-week uplift in visitor traffic during Black Friday weekend with location intelligence company xAd saying Edinburgh and Glasgow high streets saw the largest increase in footfall.

Meanwhile House of Fraser and Selfridges won the footfall race out of all UK department stores with the biggest increases. They were followed by John Lewis in third place, ahead of Debenhams and M&S.

The company said the high streets that saw the largest increase in footfall over the Black Friday weekend compared to the preceding weekend were Princes Street, Edinburgh in first place, followed by Buchanan Street in Glasgow, Northumberland Street in Newcastle, Church Street in Liverpool and Market Street in Manchester.

xAd said that over the three-day weekend, it captured a 14% increase in footfall to UK high streets and a 23% increase to department stores. But while there was only a marginal increase in footfall on Black Friday itself, Saturday was a much higher shopping day, with 24% more footfall than the previous week to high streets and 35% more to department stores.

It also said that Scottish shoppers and those in Northern England were very focused on Black Friday deals.

Meanwhile, research it commissioned among 2,000 consumers showed that most shoppers will go to the high street or visit a shopping centre for their Christmas purchases (67%). A third of shoppers will use their PC or laptop (32%) and a fifth (21%) will use their mobile phone.

Most sales take place on the high street because people believe that they can get all of the gifts they need at once (37%). This convenience is even more important to female shoppers, with the figure rising to 41%.

In addition, 21% of people visit physical stores because they don’t have to wait for the delivery of products as they do with online shopping and nearly 10% go there because there are other places to visit besides retail outlets, such as coffee shops, cinemas and restaurants.